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Chapter 2: Thought Birth Control

Conscious soul,

I am delighted to see you. You have gathered in this solitary place in your search to attain godliness, to find the truth, to know your own self, your being. But may I ask you a question: Is what you are seeking separate from you? You can search for someone who is separate from you, but how can you seek that which you yourself are? Your own self cannot be sought in the way in which everything else is sought, because in this case there is no difference between the one who is seeking and the one who is being sought. You can seek out the world but you cannot seek out your self. He who goes out in search of his self goes farther away from his self. It is necessary to understand this truthfully - then the search may even be possible.

If you want to find the material things of the world you have to look outside yourself. But if you want to find your self you have to drop all seeking and be composed, unruffled, unanxious. That which you are can only be found in total calm and emptiness. Remember that a search is also an anxiousness, a tension, a lust, a desire. But the self - the soul - cannot be realized through desire. This is the difficulty. Desire means that one wants to become something or to attain something, while the soul is that which is already attained. The soul is what I, myself, am. Desire and the soul are two opposite directions. They are opposite dimensions.

Hence, understand it well that the soul can be attained but it cannot become an object of desire. There cannot be any desire as such for the soul. All desire is worldly; no desire is spiritual. It is desire and lust that make up the world. Whether this desire be for money or for meditation, for worldly position or for godliness, for worldly pleasures or for liberation, it makes no difference. All desires are desires, and desire is a bondage.

I don’t ask you to desire the soul. I only ask you to understand the nature of desire. The understanding of desire frees one from desire because it reveals its painful nature. The understanding of pain is freedom from pain because having understood it, no one can desire it. And in the moment when there is no desire, when the mind is not perturbed by lust and you are not searching for anything, then at that very moment, at that calm and tranquil moment you experience your real authentic being. The soul manifests itself when desire disappears.

Hence, my friends, I would ask you not to desire the soul but to understand desire itself and be freed from it. Then you will know and will realize the soul.

What is religion? Religion, dharma, has nothing to do with thoughts or with thinking. It has to do with no-thinking. Thinking is philosophy. It gives you conclusions but does not bring any solution. Dharma is solution. Logic is the doorway to thought while enlightenment is the doorway to solution.